Past Adventures

Titus Project – YWAM Muizenberg || South Africa ||June-September 2016

Before I left for my C-SBS, people would ask me if I was going on outreach after the school, and I would confidently tell them that if God asked me to, I would, but I didn’t feel like he was going to. Ha, right.

In January, God told me that I was going to South Africa on outreach. I prayed for weeks without telling anyone, and then slowly let key people in to pray with me. It was settled – I was going to South Africa!

Titus Project is the optional outreach portion of C-SBS where we got to learn, after studying the bible for 9 months, how to teach the bible. We spent 3 months in lecture, learning, preparing and practicing. We were then sent out in three teams – Tanzania, Malawi and South Africa.

I was on Team South Africa. We travelled around the Eastern and Western Cape, from Muizenberg to Port Elizabeth to Jeffreys Bay to Worcester and back to Muizenberg. We got to teach in churches and youth groups and Sunday schools, in community groups and a DTS and to women who had previously been trafficked.

My favourite part of the whole outreach was seeing the looks on people’s faces when the truth clicked. We taught them to study the bible for themselves, and we also taught an overview of the entire bible. We empowered people who normally would never have had the chance. It was an incredibly difficult 2.5 months, but it was such a gift. It has been a launching pad for me in my speaking, teaching and preaching.

When I was in high school, I couldn’t have cared less about the bible. I simply had no interest. All of a sudden while I was in DTS, I had an unexplainable urge to understand the bible more. I know classify myself as a “bible nerd”.

C-SBS is a 9 month school where we study through the entire bible, reading through each book a total of 5 times within a matter of a week. We dig and study and discover the structure of the book, the history, the people it was written about and to, the impact it would have had on the original readers. We then we take the timeless truths we’ve pulled and apply it to our own lives in the 21st century.

What an amazing gift it was to be able to set aside 9 months of my life to only study God’s Word. At my graduation, I got to share how God saw that it was worth it to spend 9 months, and over $10,000 simply to tell me that he loves me. In Numbers, my mind was blown when I realized that God LOVES people! In John, I realized that God loves ME. In Romans, I understood the salvation message for the first time, and it changed everything.

These 9 months have set a foundation for the rest of my life, whether I go on to be a missionary or work a “normal” job in my hometown or join a ministry somewhere. Wherever I go, I will be grounded in truth.

I told God that I would never go to LA and I would never do a DTS, unless it had to do with human trafficking. Of course, a DTS with a focus of human trafficking was born in LA, and of course, I felt like God was asking me to go.

The first 3 months of the DTS was our lecture phase where we heard lectures on topics such as the Father Heart of God, Identity, the Character and Nature of God, Relationships, and much more. These three months are the most intense healing process I have ever gone through. God took me through a wild ride of forgiveness for some really deep hurts, and ultimately, set me free. I came into DTS hard as a rock. Throughout the 6 months, I became a new person, a softer, more whole person.

We did local outreach weekly with the ministry Justice 180. We would go out to the streets of LA from 3am-6am and hand out gift bags with the message “Because You Matter” to women who were being sexually exploited. We got to love them, pray for them, and in some cases, befriend them.

The second 3 months, we spent on outreach in Cambodia and Thailand.

In Cambodia we worked with a lot of children who were at risk of being trafficked. We worked at a day care centre that was created so that single moms with unexpected pregnancies had a choice other than abortion. We played at a centre for boys who were or who were at risk of being trafficked along the riverfront. We held babies and played with toddlers at a night care centre, a safe place for moms who were being sold for sex to bring their children so they didn’t have to go to work with them. This country holds so many of my tears, and such a large piece of my heart.

In Thailand we spent a lot of time at the bars, where women and men are sold for sex. In the afternoons in Chiang Mai, we would go and prayer walk the red light district. At night time, we would go and build relationships with the women who worked at the bars. I still get to talk to some of the girls and see where their lives are going. One is in university. One just finished her own DTS and is working in a cafe. Some are still in the bars. We also went to Pattaya, which is a city built on sex tourism. I have never experienced such darkness, and yet seen the light of God break through so powerfully. One of my fondest memories is handing out roses to the women in the bars on Valentine’s Day.

DTS changed me. I can only hope that I impacted others along the way too. God is in the business of life change.

In 2014, I had a fairly normal life. I was fresh out of high school and working a full time job at a factory. I was planning to do a DTS with YWAM LA in the fall, so a factory job was good money.

One day, I heard God say to me, “I want you to work at Pembina Valley Bible Camp for the summer.” My response: “Umm, you do know that a DTS costs money, right?” I thought he was absolutely insane. I thought my days as a summer camp staff were over, after 4 previous years at other camps. However, I could not shake the feeling.

So, I quit my job and I went to camp. The staff became family, and the kids that came to the camp immediately stole my heart. The focus of Pembina Valley is mostly on teens, which is the age group I’m most passionate about.

In 2015, I took on a leadership role by joining their Spring Staff team. It was an intense and difficult 4 months, as I had just gotten back from my DTS and I was culture shocking hard, but there was so much grace and support from my team, and I learned so much.

I got to pour into the lives of countless teenagers at PVBC over 2 summers. I got to hear their stories, and be a part of them for a week. I got to laugh and have fun and learn and simply be with a cabin full of teen girls every week. I got to challenge them and ask hard questions. I got to watch them be there for each other. Pembina Valley Bible Camp will always have a piece of my heart, as it is forever a part of my story.

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Meet Arial

I am everything creative - from speaking, to writing, to playing music, to typography, to making spaces beautiful. Living in & embracing the beautiful tension that is life. Having done missions in LA, Cambodia, Thailand & South Africa, I am now taking a year to rest & learn in my hometown.

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